


From the desk of Hadden Pertwee

by Hadden Pertwee (Atrus)



Category: The Secret World
Genre: Gen, Hadden Pertwee, KBC, Knightstbridge Consulting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:07:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 21,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29473707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atrus/pseuds/Hadden%20Pertwee
Summary: Knightsbridge Consulting was a cabal/guild in the Secret World MMO which focused on the 'minor' cases that the secret societies did not deem important enough to investigate or solve: small hauntings, minor spirits, lesser monsters, and paranormal disturbances... if people's lives were affected, KBC was ready to help.KBC has sadly shut down in 2020, so I'm copying here some of my own case reports for posterity.
Kudos: 1





	1. Phi Pob

_We've had a request from the Royal Police Department in Thailand - They had been called in to deal with a female spirit in a rural community. With this being outside of their normal area of expertise they have asked us for help and discretion._

_It's important that the community have confidence in the police department, so I'm asking a Consultant to go assist the police with this matter. You'll need to interact with the police department and help evict the spirit known as a Phi Pob from the village._

* * *

**Case Title:** Phi Pob  
  
 **Consultants:** Hadden Pertwee  
  
 **Resolution:** The phi pob has been dispatched, and an additional local ghost has been turned to help the population.  
  
 **Case Write Up:** I got in touch with officers Sakuntabhai and Kamolvisit as soon as I got at the airport. Sakuntabhai explained to me that he was the one who convinced police chief Chaiprasithikul to call for external help, while Kamolvisit was there to act as translator.  
The officers explained to me that many Thai rural communities are extremely superstitious. Requests of extra police patrols to guard the communities against ghosts aren't uncommon, and possession by a phi-pob is often used by the older locals as a 'rationale' for mental health disorders. That they called a consultant from a different country was a sign that the police thought this could be an actual, _real_ case of ghost haunting.  
  
On the first day in the province we visited the locations where the first four cows were killed. The cows were all of different owners, grazing in different fields, and there didn't seem to be anything connecting them except for their gruesome death: their bellies had been split open, and their intestines devoured*.  
I then accompanied Sakuntabhai's patrol for a few days, trying to get a feel of the place, find signs of supernatural presences. We were taking the same route as the patrol that had fallen mysteriously ill, which also passed near one of the fields where a cow was killed.  
  
Officially I was just a consultant for the police but, after someone saw me drawing a sigil, the word started spreading that I was an exorcist in incognito. I didn't encourage the rumor but also did little to discourage it, as it was easier to go along with it than explaining the truth.  
After almost ten days of patrols we stumbled upon a dead cow, freshly killed. This time there was a very strong trace of residual magic energy left, and I used a simple locator spell (facilitated by the many proximity wards I left in the area in the previous days) to follow it back to the local butcher.  
  
When we entered the butcher shop, we were presented with a scene of devastation. Knives were flying all over, as well as animal parts. A ghost, clearly visible, was hovering over the body of the butcher, lying face down on the ground.  
The two police officers offered to draw the attention of the ghost while I worked to seal it inside a ward. During this attempt, officer Sakuntabhai was hit in the shoulder by one of the knives.  
As soon as I completed the containing ward, though, the ghost seemed to calm down, and actually volunteered to us its story.  
  
As it turns out, there had been _two_ ghosts in the region, a phi pob ad a phi ka. The phi pob had tricked the phi ka long ago, making it leave its favorite body and then possessing it in their place. Since then, the phi ka had been getting its revenge on the other ghost by killing its host bodies and eating their entrails, so that the phi pob, despite being the 'victim', would be blamed in its place.  
  
That night, as it happened, the phi ka had managed to kill the cow before the phi pob managed to leave the animal for another body, and so their long feud had finally ended. Deprived of the purpose that had driven its actions in the last few decades, the ghost had started lashing out - which was when we arrived.  
  
With the help of Kamolvisit as translator, we managed to convince the ghost to become a Phi-Ka-Takood, a ghost that makes the fields more fertile, in reparation for the damage it had brought to the local population and the police.  
The butcher, unfortunately, had been possessed for too long to be saved.  
  
* The bodies had already been disposed of, so I gathered this from the police reports and photography, as well as witness descriptions.  
  
 **Follow Up Actions:** I am keeping in contact with officer Kamolvisit to check on the health of officer Sakuntabhai, who seems to be making a full recovery from his injury. In a few months, a local Buddhist monk will check if the Phi-Ka-Takood is actually doing the work it promised to do, or if it will need to be dealt with as well.

* * *

_Good work in resolving not just the case, but two potential paranormal issues in one fell swoop._

_The term 'supernatural' implies some of the things we investigate do not belong in nature. That is not always the case. Furthermore the contacts you've made in the area may be useful in the future._


	2. The Buzzer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Co-written with Mayahuel Bailey.
> 
> Incidentally, the Buzzer / UVB-76 was mentioned by Sonnac in a mission report in the Carpathian Fangs, though in a very vague "we don't want a repeat of that" way.

_Recently in the news there's been talk of an radio station in Russia that no-one claims to operate. This station is thought to be located in swampland, not far from St. Petersburg, and broadcasts a buzz or drone 24 hours a day. One or twice a week, a man or woman will read out words in Russian. It's been doing this for 3 decades now._

_Some believe this station is a 'Dead Hand' signal -- a way to auto-retaliate if Russia was ever hit by a nuclear explosion and the station stopped broadcasting. There's a number of other mysterious number stations in operation, transmitting bits of poetry and seemingly random numbers._

_But there was also the 'Lonely Patriot' station which definitely had a bit more of paranormal tilt. This is of note because the facility the 'Lonely Patriot' station was broadcasting from was in Romania, and operated by the Red Hand -- The Soviet Military agency responsible for dealing with the paranormal during the Second World War and the Cold War._

_Basically -- we don't know what this signal is, and we should. I'd like a Consultant to dig into it a bit. See if they can uncover anything about MDZhB and determine if it's being used for any sort of Occult Activity._

_I look forward to the report._

* * *

It was early morning. Maya had just finished packing her small bag when she heard the buzzer downstairs in the gallery. She made her way to the door and welcomed Hadden Pertwee into the sitting room off the foyer.

“Good morning,” she smiled, motioning toward the sofa. “Please make yourself comfortable. Our itinerary and tickets should all be in order. Looks like we will arrive in Moscow and travel by rail to the last area of transmission. Would you mind taking a look to double check?”

Next to a tray with assorted fresh pastries were two small binders containing travel documents for the both of them. It was her first assignment at Knightsbridge with a partner, so she had focused most of her nervous energy the night before on baking.

“Do you take coffee or tea, Mr. Pertwee?” Maya asked.

“Tea will be fine, thank you.”

Hadden smiled at the warm welcome and followed Maya inside the gallery, taking the time to appreciate the art pieces exposed. He was more into visual design and architecture, but he was still able to appreciate the rest of the arts.

The smile faltered at Maya’s mention of travel and tickets. Evidently she was another non-Bee. He had hoped that at least this time they could cut through the Agartha railway and skip straight to the last few kilometres, but it seems that luck wouldn’t have it.

Still, while he waited for the offered tea, he nibbled on one of the pastries and opened the folder sporting his name. “Do we have a contact there or are we on our own? I suppose I should mention that I really don’t know any Russian, apart from a couple phrases that my friend Ivan taught me. If we need to talk to people or decode documents we’ll probably need to hire a CoV translator.”

He raised the half-eaten pastry in appreciation. “These are really good, by the way.”

Maya returned with a cup of tea for Hadden and coffee for herself.

“Thank you,” she replied, taking a seat across from him and helping herself to a scone. “With Berry gone I hardly know what to do with myself so I end up baking ridiculous amounts.”

His subtle reaction to the tickets earlier had not escaped her. She took a sip of her coffee and nodded toward them. “My dearest friend Sonia arranged all the travel and support we will need while out in the field. She’s not affiliated with the Council but does work for them quite often.”

Maya continued, “Our translator and guide will meet us in Moscow. Taras Makarovich--his data is on page 2. Sonia assures me he is the best.”

Taras Marakovich looked directly out from his photo. 27 years old, from St. Petersburg with an impressive pedigree of both combat and linguistic experience. Maya hoped that Taras’ military skills would not be needed but she was glad to know he could take care of himself if necessary.

She waited for Pertwee to reach the page with the first leg of the itinerary: Agartha - Moscow.

“Buzz buzz,” she grinned. 

Hadden couldn’t completely repress a sigh of relief at the sight of Agartha on the itinerary. “Sounds good to me. Much easier to bring equipment in, too. No customs to fool via magic.”

He skimmed through Marakovich’s resumé, nodding approvingly at the credentials. “The broadcasting location is a military site. We should find a good excuse to go around and snoop in. Or at least a good excuse to use if they catch us. I can make us hard to detect, but it’s more psychological than actual invisibility, and it’s not foolproof.”

Hadden looked at Maya, wondering if she had perhaps thought of another angle.

Maya nodded in agreement. “Yes, I think it would be wise to have a cover story if necessary.”

She paused for a moment to think and shrugged, “What do you think about simply playing the part of a couple of numbers radio enthusiasts? The misguided tourist routine has gotten me out of a couple of potentially bad scenes before.”

“And that gives us an excuse for not knowing the language. American tourists are dumb and expect everyone to know English, no? And if they don’t, we just have to speak slower and louder,” Hadden grinned, saying all this in his best San Francisco accent.  
“We can figure out the details during the trip, but this seems like the easiest cover to maintain. And I’m ready to go if you are.” He extends his hand on the tray to pick up another pastry. “After another few of these, that is.”

Maya laughed at Hadden’s accent and matched it with an exaggerated southern drawl. “Since we’re fixing to go here in a little bit, I’ll run upstairs and get my bag.”

By the time she got back downstairs with her bag, Hadden had finished off the last pastry and moved to help clear the tea tray. She assured him that the friend she’d asked to mind the gallery would put things away.

The two walked together to Ealdwic Station and to the Agartha Portal. They chatted on the way about Hadden’s ranch in New Mexico, Carlsbad Caverns and their favorite places to eat in Taos - or rather, Maya’s favorite places . They arrived at the portals to Eastern Europe and Maya looped her arm into the crook of Hadden’s.

“Shall we begin our adventure, Mr. Pertwee?” she asked with a conspiratorial wink.

Marakovich was waiting for them on the other side of the portal. Russian in demeanor as well as looks, the man frowned slightly at the sight of the two consultants crossing through in good humour and with their arms crossed.

The man shrugged in his felt gray coat and made a step towards them. “Bailey and Pertwee, from Knightsbridge.” It was a statement, not a question. “The station is this way.”  
He waved his hand towards a cold cement corridor, stained by humidity. It looked like their portal had delivered them in the sub-basement of a sub-basement. 

Maya pulled her own jacket out and quickly put it on. Taras walked purposefully ahead of her and Hadden, saying nothing. The corridor was quite long and he would cock his head over his shoulder impatiently at them if they did not keep pace.

They finally reached an old elevator that looked like it had been there since at least the cold war. Maya made a nervous face at Hadden as they pulled the door closed and the car began to creak its way up the cable. Hadden got his jacket on as well, except his seemed to appear out of nowhere and onto his arm.

At Maya’s questioning look, he’d reply with “Carryall amulet. It’s how i manage to travel with only a light luggage. And you don’t have to open your bag to get something out.”

A grunt came from the direction of Marakovich, but it wasn’t clear if it was in reply to Hadden, or from having to operate the ancient elevator. After a wobbling and creaky minute which, without the bee, would probably have shaved a few years off their lives, they were delivered on the main floor of a bustling station.

“Moscow-Passazhirskaya,” said their translator, “from here we take the train to St. Petersburg. Four hours. Then two slower trains to destination. Suggest we get food and drinks and books before we go, if you need them.”

Hadden had packed some boxed snacks, but since they were already there, he made sure to get some pirozhki and kompot for the trip. As for reading material, he was good. Maya gave an appreciative look at Hadden’s explanation. Her companion was certainly full of surprises. The almost silent treatment from Taras continued until they were on the train car, a more modern and welcome change from the elevator. Nothing fancy, but the seats were comfortable. Maya settled in across from Hadden, watching as he organized his travel space to suit him.

“I will be in the next car until we reach St. Petersburg. Since we are there until the next morning, I took the liberty of arranging a meeting with someone I think may be helpful to your investigation.” Taras’ manner was not friendly but efficient. He gave a curt nod and closed the door to the car.

Still fascinated by Hadden’s coat trick, Maya was even more amazed to see all of the things he’d brought out for the trip seemingly out of thin air. “How do you do all this, Hadden?” she asked, “I’ve seen witches and magical folk of different sorts, but I’ve never seen anyone quite like you.”

She thought for a moment that she’d overstepped, and quickly added, “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay. I don’t mean to pry.”

Hadden laughed gently, apparently surprised at the question. “What, the amulet? I thought this kind of thing was kind of common in our line of work.”

The noise from the carriage and its inhabitants was probably enough to cover the specifics of their conversation to anyone listening in, even if they could understand English, but he still didn’t feel too comfortable talking about the secret world in public. He could try to weave a privacy ward around them, but it was harder on a moving vehicle. He should really work on fixing that spell, at some point.

“The one I’m wearing is a gift, but I’m told they are not too hard to make if you have the knowledge and the proper tools. It doesn’t have to be a necklace, either. A friend of mine has a proper, bottomless Mary Poppins bag.”

Maya’s eyes widened with surprise at the mention of Mary Poppins and she clapped her hands in delight. “Oh, I always wished she were real. How wonderful to know that something like that wonderful bag of hers actually exists!”

Since her powers were something that were more instinct than thaumaturgy, she had always been completely taken with wonderworkers and their abilities to pull magic out of its hiding place in even the most mundane settings.

“No matter how much I see it all still amazes me, really,” she said, “Even my own abilities catch me by surprise every so often.”

Hadden nodded at that, leaning a little forward. “I’d be curious to hear more about your abilities. We should trade notes when we get to the hotel, to know what each of us can do to help the investigation, or if things get dicey.”

Maya smiled politely and gave a vague affirmative without giving much of what she was capable of away. “Oh, I can’t do much, really,” she said, “But I’m sure we will be fine as long as stick together.”

When the conversation fell into a lull, Hadden stretched out in his seat, put on a pair of noise-cancelling headphones, then let the outside world dissolve and only cared about the adventures of Keisha the truck driver for a while. With, of course, appropriate pauses for tea and pirozhki , which he happily shared with Maya.

He would have shared with Taras too, but their guide seemed content in spending their trip apart, probably planning that meeting he had in mind. Or grumbling about western decadence. 

Upon their arrival to St. Petersburg, Taras unceremoniously led them to another Soviet era building where they walked up several flights of stairs before they came to a small apartment.

“This is Dr. Alexandrovich,” Taras said, “From the files I reviewed prior to your arrival, I believe he will be of use to you for information.”

“No need to translate!” A very elderly man rushed forward and began shaking Hadden’s hand vigorously. He looked to be at least eighty or so. His eyes were bright and he spoke excitedly. “Finally! I have been waiting for years for someone to help. Come, come...sit, sit.”

He waved them to a small kitchen table where he’d spread out articles and photos from the last few decades related to the mysterious Russian station as well as other numbers stations around the world. There was an old transistor radio that played classical music in the background which Alexandrovich turned up as his guests took their seats at the table.

The old professor spoke excitedly, in hushed tones, obviously still mistrustful of his own government. “The military, as usual, wants everyone to think that this is their handiwork. It is not. They have tried for years to get rid of him, even tried destroying the original equipment that started it all. Still, he always finds a way to communicate.”

“He?” Maya asked as she tried to make sense of the jumble of photos, articles, and newspaper clippings on the table.

“Yes, yes!” Alexandrovich nodded eagerly, rifling through the items to find a photo that was already beginning to disintegrate with age. He pushed the photo toward Hadden.

“My brother, Pavel Alexandrovich,” he answered.

Taras cleared his throat and announced, “Pavel Alexandrovich died in 1973.”

Hadden joined the dots. “The year that the Buzzer started transmitting.”

The professor nodded again, pushing a log book in their direction. Each row started with a date, followed by a numeric code, two set of short messages, and a signature. Although Hadden couldn’t read the text, he could see that the dates were all from late 1973. And the short signature on most of them was the same: “П. АЛЕК-”

The old man flipped the page. Again, rows and rows of dates and numbers, but Pavel’s signatures stopped somewhere in late November and were replaced by different ones, alternating every few days.

He pointed at the last date signed by Pavel. “That’s when he died. They told me it was just an accident. Faulty wiring, a short circuit, he was electrocuted and died almost instantly. I believed them, for a time. I didn’t have any reason not to. Then the messages started.”

He waved at the old radio, continuing in more hushed tones now. “There were some models of radios back then which had an excellent shortwave reception. The government didn’t like it, but we could use them to listen not just to Voice of Russia, but also news from abroad. BBC, PCJJ. Sometimes even our own military channels.”

Hadden crossed his arms. “You heard the Buzzer.”

“No. I heard my brother.” 

Maya looked at the professor and then to Hadden. The older man was shuffling through more notes and papers, mumbling to himself in Russian.

“Here,” he said, handing a handful of documents at a time to both Hadden and Taras. “I have saved everything. I try to find the pattern, the reason. I know him. He is trying to tell me what happened, but I cannot put it all together. I see pieces, fragments.”

Frustrated with trying to communicate his feelings in English, the professor launched into another long impassioned speech in his native language. Taras listened without expression and then turned to Hadden. “He wants you to solve his brother’s murder.”

Maya said to all three of the men in the room, “Well, gentlemen, I suppose if we are going to try and solve a forty-year-old murder, we’d better get to work, no?”

She sat down at the began sorting through the stack of papers and photographs, trying her best to hide her sense that neither she nor Hadden knew what they were doing. Hadden nodded, then sat at the table and began rifling through his own stack of documents. After only a minute or two he sighed in frustration, grabbed a pair of old-looking golden spectacles out of (apparently) his pocket, and put them on. His work seemed to go steadier from that.

Eventually he looked up from the papers, sighing. “I didn’t expect to spot a pattern in the first hour or two, but the fact is it’s all so… confused.” Hadden started counting on his fingers . ”It’s a live station, which is very out of the norm for a number stations. Even more odd, it’s never been transmitted from a closed booth, but from a room with other people in, so sometimes you get to hear voices, calls, sounds of people moving about. The buzzer sound itself has changed a lot throughout the station’s history, and keeps changing occasionally to this day.”

He pointed at a picture of a military base with a dog. “The oddest thing, though, is from the end of 2010. They abandoned the transmission base in Povarovo, apparently in a hurry because they left a logbook and other stuff behind. Since then, they changed the radio’s code name, and they have been creating the audio feed from the Vulcan base rather than straight at the broadcasting site. Why? What happened to create such a drastic change from the past? If we can find some hint that ties it all to Pavel...” 

Maya’s head ached from looking at all of the garbled numbers. They’d been at it for hours and still nothing. She stood up to get a glass of water. Looking at the table from a distance, all the numbers blurred together into nothing.

She stopped and set her glass down. “Wait,” she said to the three heads that were crowded over the table, still trying to piece together codes and numbers to mean something. “What if it’s not about the numbers at all? What if it’s about everything else? Everything but the numbers?”

Hadden blinked, looking at her in a mix of tiredness and confusion. “So like… what? The words? They’re supposed to be part of the code as much as the numbers, at least from what I understand of cyphers.”

Maya shook her head. “No, no, don’t think about that. This was a numbers station before Pavel’s death, and it still is today. Whatever his ghost does, if it’s his ghost, must be in addition to it. So we have to find what is different from normal operations.”

Taras swore - or at least so they gathered from his tone, and the fact that the Professor signed himself in response - and put his tablet in the middle of the table. It showed an article from a local magazine: “2010. When they moved base. Anna Sheremetyevskaya dies in her house, alone. Found a week later by neighbor she met monthly for tea. Widow of deceased soldier Pavel Alexandrovich.”

Hadden nodded, making the connection. “The death of someone he cared about. That would be a good reason for a ghost to flare up and send a stronger message, or even damage the base in his rage.” He turned to the professor: “Didn’t you know about this? I don’t find any mention of her in your papers.”

The Professor shook his head, looking contrite. “Me and Anna don’t talk after Pavel’s death. She changed, I changed. Too much pain. We lost contact when she was transferred. I didn’t know.” He blinked, realizing what the others were implying. “You think she has something to do with Pavel’s death? No! She loved him! Loved him very much. And worked in different building. Women computers don’t work in transmission center.” 

Maya looked at the article and then back to the multiple transcriptions of the signals on the table. She turned to Taras and asked what date the news story says that Anna was found. He took the magazine and read loudly, “Twenty-two of October.” He began to read silently and then looked up. “She clearly died before this because the neighbor alerted the authorities after she smelled the foul odor coming from Sheremetyevskaya’s cottage.”

Hadden and the professor began sifting through the transmissions excitedly. “Here, here,” Professor Alexandrovich exclaimed. “Every October beginning in the year of Anna’s death, there are many transmissions. So many of them!”

He scrambled through to show Hadden a handful of transmissions. “Last year! You see? Close to twenty transmissions in the same day. I don’t know why I hear it before.”

The professor motioned them to a corner of the room away from the radio. He pulled out an old cassette player and began sorting through suitcase filled with dozens of tapes that were all carefully labeled. He pulled a tape and put his finger to his lips, signaling everyone to be quiet and listen as he pressed play.

He nodded with tears as he listened and watched the faces of his guests. Hadden raised his eyebrows in surprise and grinned at Maya. Even Taras gave a small exhalation of surprise. Alexandrovich whispered over the voice on the tape. “You hear? Anna. Every time you hear the name Anna it’s him. He’s coming through and calling her name!”

They pulled several other tapes and listened. Sure enough, Anna’s name always seemed to be voiced differently from the rest. Even going back to the tapes prior to Anna’s death, the name was there--but it had increased greatly since right before her death in 2010.

Taras moved back to the kitchen table and returned to the corner where Hadden was still replaying the tapes and taking notes. He pushed the news magazine toward Maya, pointing at something that looked like a name. “Change in the plan. Tomorrow I take you and Mr. Pertwee to Abramovka village. We will need to go by car. I will collect you from your hotel at six a.m. Please be prompt.”

Their translator stood waiting for acknowledgment of his new itinerary. Maya tapped Hadden on the shoulder to get his attention since he and the professor were still engrossed in the recordings. “I think it’s time to go,” she said, with an apologetic smile to Alexandrovich. 

Abramovka was a quaint village spread over a long road, half cute, painted wooden houses, half cement precasts from the communist era. Farm and fields spread at the sides of the road, as this was still very much a rural community, or at least its older members were.  
Their car stopped in front of a simple house, similar to many other simple houses. Maya and Hadden stepped out and glared at the sun, still groggy from the early wake-up call and the long drive, while Taras was his usual perfectly efficient self. “Military homes, for married soldiers planning to start a family - or their widows. We’re lucky that not many of these have been assigned these days. Anna’s house never had a new tenant, so it’s just like she left it.”

“Do we have keys,” Hadden asked, “or will we have to find another way in?”  
“The supervisor is coming over shortly. There is no need for breaking and entering on military property, Mr. Pertwee.”  
“I am actually glad to hear that, whether you believe me or not.” The blond man chuckled. “But while we wait, I’m going to take a look around. The outside of a house can sometimes tell a lot. Especially one with such a nice garden.” He cocked his head. “Exceedingly nice, for an empty house. We’ll have to ask if someone is still tending to it.”

Maya waited by the door with Taras while Hadden surveyed the cottage and its small grounds. An older man carrying a string of keys made his way up the path and began speaking nervously to Taras as he opened the door. He refused to cross the threshold and handed Taras the key.

“He says it’s haunted,” Taras deadpanned, obviously unconvinced. The house was musty and everything was still in place except for an empty spot where it looked like a small sofa had been moved, likely where the body was discovered several years ago. Although the inside of the cottage had not been tended since Anna’s death, everything was in almost perfect order.

Hadden came in as Maya was surveying the rooms. “This room, a small kitchen and bath, plus the bedroom. You guys want to take the living areas and I’ll take the bedroom?”

Taras’ mouth tightened a little and he gave a stiff nod. Maya suspected that the idea of rifling through the personal belongings of a long dead woman didn’t sit well with him. She turned to Pertwee. “Anything interesting outside? The old man with the keys told Taras he thinks this place is haunted.”

“Nothing of note, unless the fact that the garden is perfectly tended to. Do you think it could be the keeper? As a way of, I dunno, appeasing the ghost or whatever? Or maybe a neighbor.”  
Taras shook his head. “The keeper hates coming near here. In his opinion the whole lot needs to be demolished and built over, but government doesn’t listen. So neighbor, maybe.”

Hadden smiled thinly. “Well, for once, government is right. If this house is actually haunted, building over it won’t help.” He moved into the kitchen, looking for clues. The place had been thankfully cleaned out of food and perishables, so the only things left on the shelves and sideboards were pans, dishes, cups, and other household items.

The only notable thing was a thick book in a drawer, tied close with string. Hadden used a loose strand of chaos magic to undo the knots, donned his smart glasses, then opened the volume. At a glance (and a cursory Google translation) it looked to be an old recipe book, but it was full of densely written annotations in a small but fine hand, and there were yellowing newspaper cuts jammed between every few pages.

“Hey Taras, can you give me a hand here? Can you figure out if these articles have anything in common?” He handed carefully a few of the articles to the translator, then flipped through the book again for- wait. By the frontispiece. A stamp, with a name. “Alya Sheremetyevskaya. Who’s Alya? Can it be a pet name for Anna, or is she a relative?” 

Maya glanced out the window at the small curtain pulled back in another cottage across the road. Someone was watching. “I’ll be back,” she said quickly. Both Hadden and Taras were focused on the book with its clippings. Hadden gave a quick nod and Taras didn’t bother to acknowledge anything.

Walking up the path to the other cottage, Maya locked eyes with the face in the window and smiled as she quietly spoke in her ancestors’ language under her breath. As she watched the old woman’s eyes widen and then softened, Maya was once again grateful that most magic tended to be universal. The woman didn’t understand Maya’s words but they still worked to make her feel the need to unburden herself of her secrets and propelled her out the door.

The little babushka shuffled her toward Maya and took her hand with a smile, chattering in Russian as Maya leads her back to the cottage where Taras and Hadden were still going through the recipe book. Taras held up an authoritative finger to shush the woman but stopped short as Hadden pulled an old photograph of two young girls posing together. They looked almost identical, both with serious eyes and fair hair. The neighbor woman began nodding and pointing to the photograph. Taras listened and translated.

“Two sisters,” he began, “Anna and Alya. We called them the little swans. Only a year apart but they could not have been more different. Anna went away to university and Alya stayed behind to care for their mother. She was a bitter child, always jealous of her sister, as sour as Anna was sweet.”

The old woman began to speak more insistently, looking back and forth between everyone to make sure they were understanding. Taras continued, “So there were two...until the men came to the cottage to speak with Alya. Foreigners in dark suits who came at night. A few days later Anna came home to bury their mother and then Alya was no more. There was only Anna who was not Anna.”

Maya looked at Hadden. “The little swans,” she said, still holding the old woman’s hand. “That’s the Swan Lake transmission, no? I’m starting to believe that Pavel really was trying to send messages about Anna.”

“Anna… or Alya? Swan Lake is not just a story about a pretty swan maiden, after all.” A suspicion was starting to form in Hadden. They called this a haunted house. What if…

“I’m gonna go check something upstairs. I have an idea.” He tapped Maya’s shoulder and said, just loud enough that it would not make the babushka suspicious: “The kind that’s difficult to explain. Don’t let the old lady up.” 

Once upstairs, Hadden found the bed that seemed to have best weathered the years, quickly got rid of any unwanted pests with a small discharge of downhill chaos magic, and lowered himself on it.  
He closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. This was always the unpleasant part.

Since the accident, he had never tried to die and resurrect at an anima well. He was mostly confident that it would work, but… there was something on the back of his mind telling him that Gaia didn’t really like him quite that much as before. That rebuilding him from death was maybe a tad too much work, and she might just leave him that way for good.  
The same voice, though, told him that going into anima form was different enough that it wouldn’t be a problem. His body would be right there, intact. He could almost be put into stasis, or a trance. His spirit would slip in and out, easy peasy, no death involved.  
He smiled. Maybe he should hang a sign that said “I aten’t dead”, but he doubted that Taras would get the reference-

And the world turned to gray.  
He had always been curious at the fact that anima was bright, coloured, and lively, but what the experts called anima form was dull, gray, and emotionless. Even the temperature, if such a concept could apply to that state, was nor hot, nor cold, nor temperate, but just… average.  
But some things bled through, and one of this was singing coming from the outside. No, not singing, but the echo of it. Not notes, but a reverberation in the not-air that hit the not-bones in his ear to produce non-music.

Hadden went down the stairs, then through the door the others had thankfully let open (another question, why a did spirit form had to follow physical barriers and landscape features?), and into the garden.

A ghost was there, translucent, faded at the edges, but one of those rare ones that still looked like their former selves, and not vague turn-of-the-century mannequins. Gardening clothes from the late ‘60s, shears in hand, a serene smile on her face, she was humming those not-notes and moving from bush to bush, flowerbed to flowerbed, sometimes trimming, sometimes gently stroking the plants, or just singing to them.  
He recognized the face from the photos: Anna.

Eventually the woman noticed him, and waved him over, half-walking and half-floating to a different side of the garden. She pointed with the shears under a bed of roses. “All the garden is mine, but those are me. My blood fed them. When my sister took the life out of me, it poured and poured right into them.”

Anna raised her arm, pointed again to a spot outside the garden, outside Hadden’s line of sight. “My bones rest with my mother, but she is silent. It is so lonely here.” She joined her hands in her lap, like a penitent. “If you can. If you can. Take me to Pavel. Please.”

Hadden nodded solemnly. “We will try.”  
That seemed to satisfy the ghost. Anna smiled, wide, brightly, then-  
She snapped back to where she first was, tending to the garden again. Maybe it was Hadden’s eyes playing tricks on him, but she seemed a little more translucent, the song more muted. Talking that long and so clearly must have taken a toll on the ghost.

“We will get you back together. I promise.”  
Hadden didn’t know if Anna’s ghost could hear him now, or if she needed to recover before being coherent again, but he meant what he said. 

A few minutes later, Hadden went down the stairs again, though this time inside his own body. Someone with a special sight would see that his soul wasn’t sitting quite properly inside his bones, and he almost missed the last step on his way down, but he gave the other two a grim, sad smile: “It looks like we have more than one murder on our hands.”

Maya looks up at Hadden. Taras had escorted the old woman back to her cottage and across the street. They’d both sat in silence once he returned, so she was relieved at her companion’s voice.

“Hadden,” she says, standing up from her chair to move toward him. “Are you okay?” she asks, her eyes searching his to make sure he’s no worse for the wear. Taras beckons him to sit and explain what he means. Once he relates his suspicion that Alya murdered Anna, Taras stands.

“The mother may be buried in the far end of the garden,” he states matter-of-factly. “I saw a stone that probably marks the grave when we arrived. Not uncommon in villages that lie far from a church.”

Standing abruptly, he shows the first hint of emotion the pair have seen. “You did well, whatever it was you did,” he says, putting a light hand on Hadden’s shoulder. “I will get a shovel.” 

* * *

**Case Title:** MDZhB  
  
**Consultants:** Hadden Pertwee & Mayahuel Bailey  
  
**Resolution:** This particular signal station was being hijacked from time to time by a ghostly Soviet soldier who was trying to tell the story of what had happened to him and his wife. We reunited the couple in death after solving the mystery of what had happened to the both of them decades earlier. The station continues to send signals but seems to have resumed its more mundane broadcasts.  
  
**Case Write Up:**  
  
Hadden and I went to various locations in Russia to try and resolve the mystery of MDZhB, aka The Buzzer. With the assistance of our contact/translator Taras Marakovich, we traveled first to St. Petersburg where we met with Sergei Alexandrovich who gave us information on his brother Pavel. Pavel Alexandrovich had died in 1973, the same year The Buzzer began transmitting its ghostly signal. Dr. Alexandrovich was certain that his brother's death was a murder and not an accident. He also showed us what he believed was proof that Pavel was trying to communicate with him from beyond the grave.  
  
We studied the history of the transmissions, along with Pavel's personal history. Pavel's wife, Anna Sheremetyevskaya, who was also a computer/cryptographer for the Soviet government at the time and worked at the same station had returned to her village shortly after Pavel's death. The two seemed to have been a happy couple but Anna's behavior had changed shortly before Pavel's death. Our investigation took us to the tiny rural hamlet of Abramkova, where Anna had died in 2010. We discovered that Anna had actually died prior to Pavel. She had been murdered by her jealous sister, Alya. We suspect it was a combination of personal motive and Alya having been recruited for counterintelligence, but that could not be confirmed. Anna had returned home for her mother's funeral. Pavel could not get leave. It was during this period that Anna was murdered and buried with her mother. We suspect that at some point after Alya took Anna's place Pavel likely discovered the ruse. Alya would have certainly had access to stage the murder to look like an accident. So much time had passed that any physical evidence of that crime was long since destroyed. The various signals, the broadcast of a portion of Swan Lake, and the transmission of Anna's name had all been Pavel's way of trying to send messages to anyone listening about Anna's fate. Once Hadden made contact with Anna, we were able to find her body. Her remains confirmed that she had, indeed, been the victim of foul play. With Taras' help we were able to arrange to have her buried alongside Pavel, thus reuniting the two of them in death.  
  
**Follow Up Actions:**  
  
The signals may continue for more mundane purposes, but for the time being this ghostly transmission has come to a happy end. It seems that Alya regretted her nefarious deeds and lived a very long, unhappy life in seclusion after Pavel's death. Hopefully the resolution for Pavel and Anna will have also given her some peace as well, but Taras will continue to monitor the situation and let us know if any signs of Alya's spirit emerge.

* * *

_No-one does twisted murders and cover-ups like Soviet Russia._

_Good work in piecing this together. I'm just glad it wasn't related to the Red Hand, because they always make things far more complicated._

_Well done._


	3. Board Camp Crystal Mine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While Board Camp Crystal Mine is a real place, the version of it that appears in this story is, of course, wholly fictional.

_Board Camp Crystal Mine, in Arkansas, is about to reopen. It's recently be given a boost in media coverage due to footage of levitating crystals, which I've included._

_The video and stories from the camp are odd, but I feel like it could be easily hoaxed. We have an opportunity to get into the Camp prior to it opening to the public and taking a look. We're being asked to make sure whatever is there is not malevolent, so we'll do at least that. I'd also like to know if its a hoax, and how it's being done. They apparently have witnesses, but I'd like our own set of eyes there to see this activity._   
  
_I need a volunteer to go to Board Camp Crystal Mine and get to the bottom of this._

* * *

**Case Log,** **Entry 1**

I arrived at the camp site in the early morning and met with Cheryl and Orville, the owners. I presented myself as a MUFON member tasked with making further investigations to verify the data from the video that they submitted. I asked to be allowed to install some surveillance equipment and visit the camp during the night and, and they agreed.

The owners showed more raw footage they caught of the levitating rock, and then gave me a tour of the places around the mine where the unexplained phenomena had occurred.  
I spent the early afternoon installing equipment all over the camp: motion sensors, IR cameras, a small seismographer, digital thermometers, anima meters, the works.

In the time remaining, I investigated the neighborhood.  
Board Camp is a small, unincorporated community. Painted wood houses and metal prefabs. Three churches and two post offices in walking distance of each other. Lots of tall trees. There’s a bright red volunteer fire department, and a general store that was probably last renovated during the Wilson administration.  
It’s difficult to believe there is a hoax going on without everyone around being in the know. These people probably know what each other had for breakfast.

I’m ready to spend nights at the camp, if necessary, but meanwhile I’ve made a reservation at the nearby Black Bear Cabins site. It’s only a few minutes away by car, but there’s enough nothing in between that it might as well be in another county, which suits me just fine for an investigation. 

**Case Log,** **Entry 2**

Went back to the mine in the morning to examine the first round of footage. No levitating rocks, but I did record the light flashes and drops in temperature they were talking about.  
Two of the anima meters were toppled over, but didn’t record anything unusual. Will have to ask Orville if there’s wild animals in the area.

I moved some of the recording equipment in a more secluded spot and hid it behind a concealing ward. I will also pay an incognito visit tonight to see if someone is faking these events. 

**Case Log, E** **ntry 3**

Well, this night was eventful.

I went back to the mine grounds in secret, using a shrouding amulet to keep myself hidden, and waited for something to happen - supernatural or not.  
The first few hours were as calm as you can imagine, and I started thinking nothing would be happening. There were no signs of human or animal presence, nor did I hear any sound of cars approaching.

Around 3am, all of a sudden, I experienced a sudden drop in temperature and lights started blinking in front of my eyes. They did so for a few minutes, two or three lights at a time, glowing brighter and dimmer at irregular intervals and then exploding in a flash. When a light went out, it was replaced by another after a few seconds.

Eventually I made a move to get closer to the lights. Suddenly a lot more of them appeared, and they all started circling around me, spinning faster and faster.  
I do not remember precisely what I said or did after that. I woke up a mile or so away, in the middle of the local cemetery. According to my watch it was a quarter to 4am.

I went back to the mine, but whoever or whatever was causing the light show had left. And despite the amulet, they could clearly see me.

I took a video feed with me to examine back at the cabin and left the other cameras to keep recording. Maybe there is something I missed. 

**Case Log,** **Entry 4**  
  
The lights had a pattern after all. Well, not a pattern: a vibration. It took several tries and a trip to a museum to understand it, but apparently the lights talk in [photophone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photophone). Yeah, you read that right. Whatever’s behind this, clearly hasn’t talked to a human in a pretty long time.  
  
I couldn’t make out more than snippets here and there from the video, as the camera didn’t really pick up more than the strongest fluctuations, but I assembled a basic receiver and will try to use it tonight.  
  
By the way, did you know that this is a dry county? I had to go all the way to Hot Springs to buy a beer. Freakin’ middle ages.

**Comment from Craft Ramsay**

_"That's horrible. A dry county..._

_Maybe whatever is trying to communicate is asking you to bring it a beer."_

**Case Log, Entry 5**

Success! I established a line of communication with the lights, which are not lights at all, but bluecaps. These friendly fairies have tried to get the humans to notice the quartz-rich grounds for a very long time, even going so far as to nudge the growth of the crystals closer to the surface, and yes, trying to speak to us in light vibrations as well.

The bluecaps were delighted when humans discovered the place and started digging a few years ago. They especially liked helping the kids to find the most beautiful and unusual pieces of quartz.

However, they feel that in all this time they have given a lot of assistance without nothing in return, and so they have staged their protest by flashing lights, floating rocks, and disrupting operations in general.

I asked them what it is that they wanted in return for their help, and they said that the tradition was to pay them a working man's wages - preferably coins, as metal was worth more to them than paper - but what mattered more was the principle of the thing, rather than the amount owed.

I told them that I would relay their request to the owners of the mine, but also warned them that the Murphys were devout Christians and it might be hard to convince them of the existence of spirits, let alone spirits that wanted to be paid in money. 

**Case Log, Entry 6**  
  
Cheryl and Orville Murphy were more receptive to the idea of bluecaps than I expected, calling them “mysterious creatures of God” or something to that effect. The thing, though, was that they _liked_ the supernatural activity and the attention it had brought to the mine.  
Orville even said that he didn’t want the ‘protest’ to end, as the “UnXplained tours” and souvenir sales to the curious tourists had been making them a pretty penny lately.  
  
Some of the bluecaps had to have been listening in, because he was promptly rewarded with a smashed glass thrown at his feet by an invisible hand.  
That made the owners much more receptive to the idea of an agreement, as long as it was me conducting the negotiations.  
  
It took a couple of nights, but eventually we reached a compact.  
The Murphys will pay the bluecaps a proper tribute in coins and metal every week, and they will tentatively reopen the mine for quartz digs, although with a smaller number of visitors for the time being.  
And for their part, the bluecaps will occasionally present a light show in front of witnesses or to be filmed on camera, so that the mine will keep getting publicity and the supernatural tours can go on.  
  
Per request of the bluecaps, I or another representative of Knightsbridge will visit the mine three months from now, and then again every few years, to check that the agreement is being honoured by all parts.  
  
From agent Pertwee this is all for now. I’ll write a summarised case report once I’m back in beer country.

* * *

**Case Title:** Board Camp Crystal Mine  
  
 **Consultant:** Hadden Pertwee  
  
 **Resolution:** The paranormal effects were caused by a colony of bluecaps going ‘on strike’. An agreement was found between the owners of the mine and the bluecaps to keep both the quartz mining and the supernatural tours operational..  
  
 **Case Write Up:**   
I contacted the Murphys, the owners of the mine, pretending to be a member of MUFON double-checking on the recordings.  
I set up instruments to survey the mine site during the nights, recording several phenomena including lights and moving objects. One day I went back to the mine at night to witness the events myself, and I saw several flashing lights, which stunned me and transported me to the town cemetery a mile away.  
  
My instruments detected patterns and rhythms in the flashes of light that accompanied the phenomena. The rhythms suggested that the lights communicated like a photophone, an obsolete method of voice transmission over light.  
After assembling a crude receiver, I was able to talk with the creatures, who turned out to be bluecaps. The phenomena are caused by a bluecap ‘strike’, as the fairies felt they deserve due compensation for their work in the mine.  
  
The Murphys were unusually receptive to the idea of the existence of bluecaps, but initially felt that they didn’t want to lose the attention they were getting from the tourists of the supernatural. Eventually though they agreed to reopen the mining tours and pay the bluecaps a tribute, as long as the bluecaps kept making a few supernatural occurrences to keep up public interest in the site.  
  
 **Follow Up Actions:** Per request of the bluecaps, I or another representative of Knightsbridge will visit the mine three months from now, and then again every few years, to check that the agreement is being honoured by all parts.

* * *

_Nice work there Hadden._

_There's a lot of places where there has to be partnership between the mundane and the supernatural. Unfortunately the mundane don't always realize this. Glad you were able to bring that relationship into focus and provide an adequate solution for both parties._

_But I bet you need a beer._


	4. The Black Monk of Pontefract

_One of Britain's most famous cases was documented in the summer of 1966 in Pontefract's,West Yorks. The Pritchard family moved into a house at 30 East Drive and soon began encountering a malevolent spirit. It was described as a black robed spirit, and was seen by the family and numerous paranormal investigators at the time. Over the years no-one could pin down the source of the haunting, though one researcher connected it to a Monk that was hung for the rape and murder of a young girl._

_This young girl was the same age as the Pritchard's daughter, who seemed to be a focus of whatever was happening._

_This half a century old case is in the news again, because a few new photos from the house are starting to be circulated._

_The property is now open for bookings, and has become a bit of a tourist attraction. But there are concerns by some that remember what happened in the summer of '66 who are worried about activity being stirred up and the Black Monk becoming violent. We've been asked by the Vicar of the area to investigate this discreetly. Exorcism and the use of spirit boards are banned from the property -- but that doesn't necessarily mean that someone's not up to something there._

_I'd like someone to go check this out, and if there is an evil spirit there that may cause trouble -- evict it._

* * *

Diane, I arrived at 30 east drive earlier this afternoon. The groundskeeper gave me a short tour, then gave me a key to the house and explained to me the rules - again. Couldn’t meet with the owner, as he was busy out of the region. 

Was greeted by the neighbours. They seem to be a friendly type, and regard the visitors to the house with mild amusement. 

I’m also trying a voice-activated recorder, both to keep notes while keeping my hands free to man the equipment, and also so I don’t go stir crazy with no one to talk to around here.

As you might have guessed, the activation word I chose for the recorder is-

Diane, this place is a mess. It’s like someone got old catalogs for council properties in the ‘70s and tried to replicate all the worst traits of the aesthetics. I mean, there is a grill heater with fake-wood panelling in front to make it sorta look like a fireplace. There’s even fake logs on top. I hope there’s a good pub nearby because the kitchen is- what’s that?

Diane, it appears the neighbor’s kid likes to peer in from the windows. Said hi. He didn’t reply, just stared at me a little longer then walked away. I think he might be on the spectrum. 

I installed equipment all over the house. IR-triggered cameras, EMF detectors, sound recorders, thermometers, and of course the tuning forks. If there’s anything here, they’ll find it. If not, well, it’s not a good vacation but at least it’s paid for by the company.

Diane, there’s not only a pub, but also a pizza and kebab place. I am saved.

Diane, I’m about to spend my first evening here. For the time being, I’m keeping all lights off on the upper floor and all lights on here on the ground floor. I’m gonna read some Bujold and wait for the detectors to ping, or for a shadow to appear in the mirror. 

Diane, either this house is already getting to me, or someone moved the tape recorder from the coffee table and onto the mantelpiece. Gonna tentatively mark this down as occurrence number one.

Diane, next time remind me not to read a book about the haunted house you’re currently staying overnight at while also investigating the house.

Diane, one of the thermometers sent a notification to my phone. Temperature dropped about 15 degrees Celsius in the small room. I’m gonna check it out.

Diane, a summary of what happened in the small room. When I entered the bedroom I couldn’t feel any change in temperature from before, so I thought for a moment that the thermometer might be on the fritz. However, when I turned on the lights, I could feel immediately a sudden and intense chill on my fingertips, as if the electric current itself was being frozen. I know this doesn’t make physical sense, but that is the sensation I felt at the time. I turned for a moment to look at the light switch, and when I turned again to the bed, there was a shadow sitting on its frame. Not like an actual shadow, or a man wearing a black body suit. More like a figure-shaped translucent darkening, as if someone had rubbed a dirty rag in the middle of a photograph, except the photo was what was in front of my eyes. The shadow seemed to raise its head to look at me and… something… moved where its mouth should have been. I know it talked, something like muffled, distant words, but I could not understand what it said. After that, it jumped to its feet and started walking toward the opposite wall, fading with every step. I followed the shadow to the adjacent room, but found nothing. I hope the camera got it all.

Diane, the camera has been filming a close, blurry zoom of that ugly statue of a saint I told you about before. Which is very interesting, because the statue is on the chest of drawers in the master bedroom, not in the small room with the camera.

*click* Dammit, where did I leave my book? It’s not in the living room. Did I leave it in the bedroom?

Diane, I’m feeling slightly sorry for any ghost that has to live in this dreary town. Even the sky and the grass are sad.

*click* (distant) Seriously, if there’s a ghost, I’d really like that book back- ow. Ok, geez, didn’t need to drop it on my head. (a few seconds of silence, followed by walking) Oh hey, recorder’s on. I wonder how long it’s been going-

Diane, I recorded what I think is my first occurrence in the house. Two light-azure globes appeared in the shadow of the stairwell, making their way slowly toward me and the living room. As they got closer, two brighter, tiny lights appeared inside each globe like eyes. A blotchy shadow appeared to encompass them as they got under the doorframe, and they vanished. I have it all on tape. Incredible!

*click* Diane? Casey? Guys? Anyone?

Diane, someone stacked all the cans in the kitchen in a precarious tower. I’m not even sure there were cans in the pantry before. Half the cans are wet.

*click*-den, is that you? If you can hear me-

New entry, evening of the second day. Found the boy again at the kitchen window. He was scribbling numbers and equations on it with a white marker. There was a flash outside, like lightning, and the boy screamed and ran away. The numbers and equations had turned to an odd language. Like enochian, a bit?

I tried to talk to his mother about it, but she said it must have been some other kid, because her son has been away on holiday all week.

The word-equations taunt me.

Diane, I must say that I’m really loving Pontefract. Such a lovely place and such lovely people.

*click* ...just arrived at the house. I decided to make my base in the master bedroom, but there’s this ugly-ass big statue of a saint on the drawer looking directly at the bed. I think I’ll move it to the small room, and if the owner complains, I’ll just say it was the ghost. Now, the living room is...

Diane, the front door has disappeared. I can’t open the windows, I can’t break the glass. The scenery outside is painted. I’m stuck inside. I feel like I’m in a doll house. I’m going crazy. I will never leave here. If I see an opening, any opening, I’m throwing myself out and never coming back again.

*click*-pass, I repeat, unearth the well and-

Diane, the front door reappeared. I’m going out for dinner, and then coming back here to finish the job.

*click* I found Casey. A shadowy hand has dragged her all the way to the bedroom. She’s dripping water, like she’d been dunked in a pool. She’s passed out and really needs some blankets and a change of clothes, but otherwise OK. Thank God.

Diane, I understand. I understand now. This place, this house, it’s not haunted. Not in the traditional sense. It’s a nexus. It’s built over… something. An artifact, a crossing of ley lines, I don’t know. But it’s not here. It’s… over there. In an adjacent reality. Another dimension. A parallel world. That’s where it all comes from.

New entry, night of the fourth day. When an object moves, when a shadow appears, when the heater goes cold or pools of water appear on the linoleum, there is nothing strictly supernatural at work. It’s simply the house swapping parts of itself with another version that exists somewhere else. Maybe in some places it’s not even a house. Maybe it’s a bog, or a den of thunder children. 

Diane, you might rightly ask how I came to this conclusion. The fact is, I didn’t have to. I saw myself, last night. Eyes sunken, face pale, clothes too old by a decade, but unmistakably me. He was tearing holes in the walls, in the floor, with what looked like a sledgehammer, raving about a soft spot, a distortion, and a source. A source he could feel, like static in his head, like a tinnitus inside his neurons. I don’t think he saw me. But eventually he broke through a wall, and what looked at him from the other side was… me. Again. They gasped. I blinked. They were not there when I reopened my eyes, and the walls were intact again.

There was a piece of brick on the floor, though. 

Diane… Diane…. Is this working? Oh, ok-

Diane, it’s in the well. In this reality, the well was outside, covered by the semi-detached building. But in another one-

*click* I see myself. I- he is in the kitchen, frying something in a pan, humming happily. And he is glowing. Instead of the usual, blotchy shadow that covers all apparitions in the house, he is like a beacon of honeyed, golden light. The tremors seem to shy away from it. I am talking rather loudly, but he doesn’t seem to hear me. I will try to approach him with professor Luntz’s vial. If I can get some of that light...

Diane, I’m going in.

Diane, I found this recorder on the floor. It seems to be filled with recordings by someone who sounds just like me. Given the last few notes, I suppose that, in a way, it was me. I have just arrived here at the house, no more than thirty minutes ago. I should probably leave before I get stuck in whatever loop-

*click* Too late for me. I’m giving another me the vial.

Diane, how many times do you think this recorder changed hands? How many voices are narrating this?

Diane, I found how to move. I can cross when the house shifts. I can hunt it down. I’ll find the source and I will destroy it.

* * *

_ Hadden’s note: I found this tape on the bed stand the morning of my third day in the house, along with an old, brass pocket compass that had been smashed in the middle. The readings from all my instruments went flat after this. Make of that what you will. I consider the case closed, at least for now.  _


	5. Beachy Head mist

_Holiday beachgoers said that the mist seemed to come out of nowhere. Originally the authorities in East Sussex thought the gas may have rolled in to the coast from France. It actually seems to have appeared from further out in the ocean and no one is able to pinpoint an origin. Sounds disturbingly familiar to another incident off the Kingsmouth coast. So far there have been no reports of anyone feeling compelled to go into the ocean which is a hopeful sign that this is a mundane problem. Either way, the local responders have requested our assistance. Don’t forget to pack your hazmat suit._

* * *

**Case Title:** Beachy Head mist  
  
 **Consultants:** Hadden Pertwee  
  
 **Resolution:** The toxic cloud was caused by a shipwreck that dumped the contents of some Orochi canisters into the sea. The immediate threat should be over.  
  
 **Case Write Up:** When I arrived in Eastbourne the mysterious cloud had already lifted. Some of those affected were still being treated at the local hospital, so I was able to interrogate a few of them, but they weren’t able to give me any more information than what was already published on the newspapers.  
Talking with the coastguard, however, I got a direction for the presumed origin of the fumes, and the latest theories as to its origin: a toxic algae bloom, a shipwreck, or an illegal chemical dump.  
  
After renting a motorboat and a ROV drone, I made my way out to sea and started searching the seafloor. It was just by pure luck that, 2km or so away from the coast, the camera illuminated a half-sunk speedboat surrounded by several canisters sporting the Sycoil logo. Some of the canisters had gashes in them, probably caused by impact, through which their contents had leaked out into the sea.  
  
I called a contact in Orochi, D’ante Lewis, to see if they knew anything about this. Since the speedboat is unmarked, he agreed that it’s likely that the canisters were stolen goods, and not part of any Orochi activity in the area.  
After consulting with Sycoil personnel, he confirmed that the canisters contain a chemical to be used in mining operations, and its release into seawater is likely what caused the toxic cloud. Thankfully, he also said that exposure to the gas does not have any side effects that cannot be cured by conventional medicine, so everyone affected is expected to make a full recovery soon.  
  
A few hours later, a Sycoil crew showed up to recover the wreck and the remaining canisters, and to start their own investigation on the matter. I asked them to keep me in the loop if they find anything about the thief, and they said they will share anything that doesn’t violate company secrets.  
In my professional opinion that means they’ll tell me nothing and I’ll simply have to go behind their backs. 😛

 **Follow Up Actions:** If I hear nothing from Sycoil in a few days, I’ll call D’ante and see if I can get an officially unofficial update on the state of the investigation.

* * *

_Maybe I'm becoming paranoid in my old age, but I wonder how many of those sorts of Orochi 'accidents' are actually 'accidents'._

_We've not had any more reports of toxic fog in the area, so that's good. I'd definitely like to know what was in the canisters -- and why someone would have stolen them._


	6. UFOs sighted on Nude Beach

_**Maya:** _  
_There have been reports of UFO sightings on a naturist beach in North Wales. There have been sightings of strange lights, plasma balls and other unexplained apparitions in the area. The unidentified objects have been seen on the beaches, nearby dunes and moving out to sea at all hours of the day and night. No indication as yet regarding whether the case agent will need to blend in with the local beach scene so it’s probably best to meet with our contact at MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) before setting out._

**_Hadden:_ **  
_I'm taking this one._  
_...stop snickering._

**_Craft:_ **  
_The Truth is out There..._

**_Hadden:_ **  
_...and is underdressed._

**_Maya:_ **  
_Pack your birthday suit._

* * *

**Case Title:** UFOs sighted on Nude Beach  
  
**Consultants:** Hadden Pertwee, Alex Ryder (non-KBC)  
  
**Resolution:** The UFO is just a giant case of blue balls.  
  
**Case Write Up:** I asked the Illuminati agent Alex Ryder to accompany me on the mission because of his skills as an elementalist. Also because, if I had to prance around buck naked in Welsh weather, then someone else was definitely going to suffer with me.  
  
We talked to the MUFON contact at a local café in Barmouth, and then we went to the beach and made friends with a couple enjoying the 'summer', Mortimer and Cindy. Cindy told us she had seen the phenomenon the other day, and showed us some photos from her cell phone.  
The photos show a blue ball floating in the distance over the sea, glowing brighter over a period of time, and then receding in light until it disappeared.  
She and Mort told us they also smelled a faint odor of rotten eggs.  
  
We next talked to the Cribbins family, whose youngest son had taken a high quality video of the event. Once again the orb could be seen floating lazily, with some other lights in the distance that appeared and disappeared as it did.  
Reyansh Cribbins told us that, while he doesn’t believe in UFOs, he wants to write an article about the event for the local paper. We encouraged him to write an article based only on the facts, with minimum speculation.  
  
After that, we travelled further north along the beach and found a semi-secluded cove where we set base, turned on our monitoring equipment, and waited for something to happen. After a few hours we were able to witness the phenomenon for ourselves: the blue ball appeared in the distance, followed by the other lights, and after a few seconds we got hit by the smell of sulfur.  
  
The EM meter registered a change in the electric field, but the anima meter was silent, suggesting that the event was natural, and not magical in nature. Agent Ryder used his elemental powers to figure out if the sphere was natural, and he confirmed it was made of plasma and electricity, with no hint of sentience or magic.  
Unfortunately, an unexpected feedback from the magic manifested itself as a lightning strike emanating from the sphere and hit Ryder in the chest. We picked up our stuff quickly and relocated to another cove, to prevent being found by curious tourists and UFO enthusiasts investigating the lightning bolt.  
  
After that, we spent the night at a local hotel to allow Ryder to recuperate from his injuries. Being a Bee, he recovered quickly from the lightning bolt with no ill effects.  
We visited the beach again in the morning, but we didn’t witness the phenomenon again.  
  
As far as I’m concerned, the UFOs are just and oddly frequent case of ball lightning, and the case can be considered closed.  
  
**Follow Up Actions:** I suggest a second visit some time in the future to make sure that the MUFON people haven't electrocuted themselves.

* * *

**_Craft:_ **

_I had 20 bucks on it being a local teenager with a camera equipped drone._

_Good work on closing our first UFO case. I think we can definitely file this under ball lightning. Good job in not getting fried too._


	7. Haunted pub in Liverpool

_An historic pub in the center of Liverpool that was built upon the site of an old Quaker graveyard has been the site of spooky apparitions, including a regular--what looks to be a sailor wearing a long coat. According to the owners and customers, this spirit likes to linger about the bar. There have been a few more physical encounters including one of the barmen feeling like he was being pushed. Since the bar is now standing on the burial site of a group known for its dim views of drink, the owners would like us to make sure that the non-alcoholic spirits inhabiting the bar are benign._

* * *

**Case Title:** Haunted pub in Liverpool  
  
**Consultants:** Hadden Pertwee, Marsyas Stathakis  
  
**Resolution:** The ‘ghost‘ is actually a Dragon agent working on orders from an ancient artifact.  
  
**Case Write Up:** I visited the pub a few times over the course of several days to get an early impression, using an amulet to hide my anima in case it would alert the ghost. I didn’t see any oddities myself, but every regular in the bar seemed to have their own story: emptying beers, objects moving, ghostly customers that would make an order and vanish, or only appear in the mirror behind the bar. Some of these were hand-me-down stories, but some would swear they witnessed the events themselves.  
The stories don’t seem to have any connection between them, but the sailor in a wax coat turned up a few times.  
  
After talking to the owner, Marsyas and I decided to try and spend a night or two in the establishment, since the evenings hadn’t turned out anything useful.  
The night didn't work out better but, in the early morning, we spotted the door to the kitchen opening and a figure in a yellow wax coat get into the pub room. The figure took something from their pocket, which Marsyas identified as a _zhong_ (a Zhou-dynasty bronze bell), and looked intently at it.  
After that, they pocketed the item again and proceeded to move a few objects around the room, leave a photograph on a table, and steal a beer coaster.  
  
When the person made to leave, I undid the ward that was keeping us hidden and we confronted them. Surprised at being found out, the man revealed his face and admitted to being one of many Dragon agents who had taken on the role of ‘the ghost’ at the order of the _zhong_ . The _zhong_ had been in the possession of the Dragon for centuries, and its ever-changing inscriptions contain instructions which they believe must be followed in order to prevent, or at least postpone, the end of the current age.  
In the last 20 years or so, the _zhong_ had taken a peculiar interest in the pub, ordering more and more agents to go there, and either move objects around or stage apparitions of the ghost.  
  
Marsyas asked the Dragon agent why he telling us all this, and the Dragon agent replied that the _zhong_ had told him to. Part of his orders for that night was to “explain your mission in detail to the two secret worlders”, and he was surprised when he’d found the pub to be empty.  
  
Since the actions of the Dragon don’t seem to have any negative effects, we let the agent go and parted ways amicably.  
Later that day, we told the owner of the pub that the ghost seems to be just a mix of coincidences and pranks, and marked the case as closed.  
  
**Follow Up Actions:** Go back to the pub the day after Christmas and leave a Maltese euro coin on table 12. Apparently it will help in saving the world.

* * *

**_Craft:_ **

_Can I mention I hate whenever we have to deal with whatever chaos theory stuff is being done?_

_Good to hear things are under control. We'll requisition the coin..._

**_Hadden:_ **  
_Hey, at least he didn't mention "the models"._


	8. The Howling

_A hotel manager in Scotland has recorded strange howling. The manager was making his nightly rounds at an Outer Hebrides hotel when he heard eerie sounds in the darkness that sounded very much like wolves. He recorded the sound and it’s now making the rounds on the internet with everyone guessing it could be anything from a drunk person to a whale! There have recently been large numbers of missing pets and mutilated livestock in northern England and Scotland. Werewolves are not out of the question. Even a recorded wolf would be significant since there have been no known sightings of wolves in this area for centuries._

* * *

**Case Title:** The Howling  
  
 **Consultants:** Hadden Pertwee, Alex Ryder (non-KBC)  
  
 **Resolution:** The howling had been made by two Coin-Sìth for their dying brother. They’re all safe and sound now and they have returned to the land of the fae.  
  
 **Case Write Up:** We went to Stornoway posing as tourists, trying to gather information from the locals. We learned a few tidbits of local lore and legends from two sailors and a woman at the historical society, including a story from a few years ago about a huge, shaggy dog with moss-covered fur who was found dying in the Lews Castle park, most likely of iron poisoning.  
  
Exploring the forest area, we stumbled upon a small cave, in which we found a sick creature that looked like a werewolf. Before we could figure out what to do, our way out was barred by two dogs matching the description of the one from legend. One of the dogs turned into a woman and explained that they were Coin-Sìth, the children of the mysterious dog.  
  
Being the omens of death, she explained, their people travel from fae burrow to fae burrow in the human world, howling their warning of impending death and then retreating into the lands of the fae.  
When their mother was pregnant with them, she got poisoned by eating some local food that was treated with iron-full pesticides, and the local fae burrows refused to let her come home because of their fear of cold iron. She delivered her pups in the forest, but there were complications: two pups died, one got stuck into that half-dog, half-human form, and the third couldn’t glamour himself into a human at all.  
Their mother, despite being weak from the pregnancy and the iron, started hunting farther and farther from the castle, trying to find non-contaminated food for her children. Eventually the weakness got to her and she died, leaving them alone.  
The three Coin-Sìth have fended for themselves since then, barely, but the half-human brother was now succumbing to the iron poisoning himself: the howl that was heard by the hotel manager was, in fact, the other two siblings announcing their brother’s imminent death.  
  
Alex and I snuck into the local pharmacy to get some Deferipone, and administered the pills to the sick Cù-Sith, hoping they would work even if he was not exactly human. It was a gamble, and very much a close call, but after a difficult night the Cù-Sith seemed to have expelled most of the excess iron, and he recovered enough to eat something. Just to be safe, we got him some pesticide-free meat from the shop in town.  
  
That done, we got in contact with the historian from the other day and asked her about any other legends involving the fae, Coin-Sìth, werewolves, or similar. With the help of the other male Cù-Sith, we explored a few of the places until we found a fae burrow that was willing to talk to us. The guard at the gate said the three Coin-Sith could return with him free of charge if we made it back before sunset, so we rushed to bring the other two as well to the faerie circle, where they crossed through and disappeared.  
  
A few minutes later, the ‘dog’ brother came back, now able to camouflage into human form too. He told us that a lot more time had passed for them on the other side, that they were all fully healed of the poisoning thanks to the fae healing arts, and that their sister was battling the local fae lords for condemning their mother to death in exile. As a final gesture, he told us that they’re in our debt, and since we helped them to delay an announced death, they hope they can return us the same favor one day.  
  
 **Follow Up Actions:** None.

* * *

**_Craft:_ **

_Nice job in closing this one off. I'm glad we got to it before someone a little more trigger happy might have just traveled there to eliminate the problem. It is interesting to learn about another sort of werewolf, we've all dealt with the Transylvanian variety before, but there seems to be multiple species, like these Coin-Sith and the Loup Garou._

_The hotel manager has reported the howling has stopped, and business has picked up again. It's also always good to have someone owe a favour. You never know when you're going to need it._

**_Hadden:_ **   
_I don't think they're quite werewolves. Shape-shifting and glamours seem to come more natural to the fae than most, and their true form is the *dog*, not the human or the in-between. But either way I'm glad we were able to help._


	9. Radioactive Boar

_There are packs of radioactive boar destroying forest and farmlands approximately 100 miles north of Stockholm, near Gavle. The local authorities are extremely concerned because the last boar tested at much higher levels than had been seen previously. This spike in level of contamination is concerning, as is the growing numbers of boar that seem to be showing signs of high radiation._

_Boars can be very aggressive and no one is quite sure how best to manage the situation. The story is that the contamination is Chernobyl related; however, the fact that the levels of radiation have increased rather than dissipated over time could be an indication that something more sinister is to blame. Simply shooting the animals may worsen things, so we've been asked to help assess the situation and assist with any possible solution._

* * *

**Case Title:** Radioactive Boar  
  
 **Consultants:** Hadden Pertwee (with the help of Charlie Black)  
  
 **Resolution:** The giant boars were created in an Orochi facility. The experiment has been shut down, and the remaining boars are being taken care of by the local wildlife authorities.  
  
 **Case Write Up:** Charlie and I contacted the Gavle authorities and managed to be accompanied to the area with most recent sightings. We managed to spot several wild boars from a safe distance, and even managed to tranquilize one to get a radioactivity reading.  
  
While investigating the greater area we found a fenced area with several ‘keep out’ signs, but all our guide could tell us was that the land had been bought a few years ago by “a secretive company” called, “appropriately,” Gullinbursti. Appropriately because Gullinbursti, in mythology, is Freyr’s boar, known by its glowing mane.  
A bit of research turned out that Gullinbursti was owned by a matrioska of shell corporations that, in turn, were owned by our old friend Zagan - aka Orochi.  
  
We tried calling them at first to see if we could set up an appointment under an assumed name, but no one ever answered us, despite the automated machine saying that we were the first in queue. Taking that as a giant red flag, we decided to ignore the fences and get inside.  
  
Once inside the fenced area we got into a brawl with a couple giant, angry, radioactive wild boars - and let me tell you, it’s _*not*_ something I look forward doing again anytime soon. The boars had a tracking chip though, and piggy-backing the signal to its source we arrived at the entrance of a hidden laboratory, disguised as a low mound that was actually a very large lift.  
  
Inside the underground facility, there was… hell. High radioactive levels, and dead people with blisters and burn marks all over their bodies, most still seated at their desks. The bee offered us protection but it was still tough, so we scrambled into a couple protective suits we found in the lobby. Apparently whatever hit them happened so fast that they didn’t even have time to suit up.  
Further inside the facility there were laboratories with cages full of animals (mostly boars), dead of radiation, as well as other labs with dissected and autopsied carcasses. At the very back, a bright red radiation warning stood over a thick, closed blast door. Apparently, once the blast doors were down, there was no way to unlock them from our side.  
  
We grabbed a few notebooks and tablets and took them outside the facility, hoping that taking them away from the worst of the radiation would render them at least partially operable. Some of them managed to turn on and had still some documents saved offline, which allowed us to get an idea of what was going on.  
  
Gullinbursti was part of Zagan’s initiative to find food sources for the upcoming apocalypse. In particular, Gullinbursti was tasked with creating animals that could survive in extreme radiation but with meat that could still be consumed by humans without ill effect. The scientists in charge chose wild boars as their main specimen, since they are naturally resilient creatures and their meat is usually appreciated. The boars of Sweden, in particular, had already been exposed to Chernobyl radiation for generations, making them the perfect candidates to test against their control group.  
It took a few years and several mutated strains, but eventually they managed to create a subspecies of giant boar that could survive in a highly radioactive environment.  
  
They were working on the second part of the plan - making them edible - when the accident occurred: during an irradiation experiment, one of the test subjects got into a frenzy and damaged the control unit of the Third Age artifact they were using as a controlled radiation source. The whole base was immediately inundated with hundreds of Sieverts, and by the time the trap doors sensed the radiation and dropped automatically, all the personnel had already been exposed to a deadly dose and they all died within minutes.  
(We reconstructed the accident from security videos - there is no official report, of course.)  
  
The latest document is a communication from Orochi Core from two years ago, marking Gullinbursti as a closed experiment and the site condemned, given their lack of reply to their latest update requests.  
  
 **Follow Up Actions:** I have compiled a list of the deceased to send to Orochi so they can notify the families, but I’m holding on sending it until we decide what to do with the artifact. We can let Orochi try to retrieve it, notify the CoV, or just destroy the lift and quietly forget about it.

* * *

_We've had the misfortune with dealing with a Zagan based problem in the past -- Infected Chicken being provided to a retirement home as some sort of test. I can imagine that whatever sort of bacon they were cooking up would not have boded well for the consumer._

_Good job on closing this up, and good to see Charlie is still around._


	10. Haunted School

_Alright, it's October, so I take all videos we get referred to with a grain of salt (or a whole brick of it), and despite the fact this video could be easily faked, I think it might be good to check out the school for a number of reasons._   
  
_1\. Ireland is notoriously haunted_   
_2\. The School is apparently built on the[Gallows Green](http://corkheritage.ie/?page_id=837)_   
_3\. Kids could be in danger_   
  
_Looking for a Consultant to head to Cork Ireland and look into this._

* * *

******Case Title:** Haunted School  
  
 **Consultants:** Hadden Pertwee (with the help of Charlie Black)  
  
 **Resolution:** The ‘ghost’ was a ramp-up event to the Halloween ball, orchestrated by deputy principal Aaron Wolfe and the filmmaking class.  
  
 **Case Write Up:**  
We went to the school under the guise of two private investigators acting on behalf of some ‘concerned parents’ who didn’t like that the school was promoting ghosts and other non-Christian imagery. Principal Kevin Barry was initially quick to dismiss us, but after we insisted, he summoned deputy principal Wolfe to talk with us as well.  
  
Wolfe explained that the two ghost videos were fake, pranks made to muster up attention to their Halloween event. The videos were made by their filmmaking class, using a mix of practical effects and video editing.  
As for the ghost imagery, the school has been milking its ‘most haunted school of Ireland’ slogan for years, and it was not going to stop now.  
  
We managed to take a look at the security tapes from those days and, to the surprise of both us and the principals, the two tapes regarding the ghost had been erased. Only those two - all the other tapes from the same days were fine.  
  
Due to this development, Charlie made the principal agree to let us stay inside the school for one night, under supervision of the security guards. To our mild surprise, the night passed uneventfully.  
We spent a second night there on the next day, protected by a privacy spell so that we could roam undetected and without supervision, but we still didn’t witness anything out of the extraordinary.  
  
We submitted a report to principal Barry saying that our clients were satisfied with our findings, and marked this case tentatively closed as a harmless, mundane prank, despite the deleted tapes.  
  
 **Follow Up Actions:** Maybe we should check the school again around next Halloween, or during another month of planned events and supernatural attraction. Just in case. 

* * *

_Odd about the tapes vanishing, I'll make sure to keep an eye out for any other news from the area that falls into the world of the supernatural. I'm also impressed by the effects done by the kids. It won't be the last haunting case we investigate where it turns out to be a publicity stunt, unfortunately -- especially as technology continues to get better and special effects become more realistic._


	11. The Mysterious Texas Boom

A mysterious booming sound rattled residents a few days ago in north Texas. Witnesses reported seeing a flash and then an extremely loud boom. A University of North Texas astronomer, Ron Dilulio, believes that the sound was caused by a meteorite or some other sort of space debris.

We have been hired anonymously by a client who does not trust Dilulio's story and would like us to do some independent investigating. This client believes that it is simply not plausible that something would cause that sort of sound and leave no trace of any sort. Just as an interesting aside that may have no significance to this case, Oak Cliff is an area with some history. It is where Lee Harvey Oswald was caught in a theater after the Kennedy assassination. 

* * *

**Case Title:** The Mysterious Texas Boom  
  
 **Consultants:** Hadden Pertwee, Marsyas Stathakis  
  
 **Resolution:** The boom was caused by a fight between secret world operatives  
  
 **Case Write Up:** Marsyas and I investigated the area separately for a few days, meeting back together at the end of the day to compare notes. He pretended to be a journalist doing a follow-up piece, while I asked questions around playing the part of one of our old friends at MUFON.  
  
We didn’t get much in the way of solid leads, but we stumbled on something apparently unrelated: a church a few blocks away, Iglesia La Luz Del Mundo, reported some attempted break-ins around the night of the loud bang.  
  
On a hunch, we decided to try some nocturnal prayers of our own, but our attempts at entering the church were interrupted by the sudden arrival of two armed Illuminati agents. Marsyas quickly proved that he was an Illuminati himself, and so we were able to interrupt the confrontation before it became too violent.  
  
The agents explained that the church itself is a mundane community, but the building provides secondary access to an Illuminati server farm that Phoenician operatives had been trying to get into lately. January 10th was only one of the attempts, but the fight that night had extended beyond the circle of privacy that protects the area, and so one anima-powered gunshot was heard by all the community. Astronomer Ron Dilulio was ‘gently nudged’ to provide the meteorite explanation to the media as a cover-up.  
  
Obviously the Illuminati had no intention of letting us into the compound, so we have no way to verify if the ‘server farm’ claim is true, or if the Phoenicians are actually searching to extract something else. That, however, is a Lumie problem and doesn’t strictly concern this case nor KBC. As far as we’re concerned, the true source of the loud noise has been found, and the case is closed.  
  
As for our client, unless they are part of the secret world, they'll have to be satisfied with Dilulio's explanation.  
  
 **Follow Up Actions:** None

* * *

**_Craft:_ **

_I'm sure the client will be satisfied with the explanation, but there's been a worrying trend as of late of secret worlders not really keeping the secret part. Circle of privacy or not, there's a risk with being so close to people who are unaware there are operatives with magical powers running around. I'd expect there was something other than a server farm kept there, and as part of our information sharing with the other factions and the council, I expect once this report is filed to the respective liaisons whatever was kept there will be moved somewhere safer and less 'mundane'._

_Good work you two. We'll keep an eye on the area to see if there's any further interactions between the blue team and the lions._

**_Hadden:_ **

_Assuming that's an option. Some ancient 'server farms' don't like being relocated from their current residence._


	12. Disturbing Sounds from Canadian Woods

_As incredibly tempted as I am to make all sorts of terrible "Craft in the Woods" jokes here, this is a video sent to us by a local agency in British Colombia. Anyone who wants to brave the cold? We just need a quick evaluation of the video, maybe talk to the kids who captured it and see what's up._

_If it turns out that there is something in the woods that Knightsbridge needs to deal with, get with me and I'll authorize more funds from the client._

_[Attachment: a video of a snowy, wooden landscape, with an odd howling sound in the background]_

* * *

**Report 1:**  
  
I arrived in Moricetown early in the morning. Shelley Wilson, the woman who made the video, had to delay our appointment to the next day, so I used the extra time to familiarize myself with the town and the surroundings.  
  
Moricetown is small and spread out, about 800 souls. Most are Wet'suwet'en nation, though the town has its own separate Band. Many of the locals actually prefer it if you call the town Witset, its original name, since missionary Father Morice (whom the current name is dedicated to) converted several people to Catholicism under duress.  
The town is also locally famous for its canyon, which was (and still is) an important salmon fishing spot for the native population.  
  
I asked a few of the locals about the video. Most laughed about it, saying it was just a bull elk or some other animal with a high-pitched call. Some called it stupid and attention seeking. Some called _*me*_ stupid for asking about it. And some elders, again, laughed and said it was maybe a waheela, or an amarok, or a grizzly ancestor grumbling.  
  
Since there are no accommodations in town, I had to go back to Smithers for the night, and return to Moricetown the next day.  
  
Wilson received me in the town’s bar, and explained that she had heard that noise a few times before without giving it much thought, but then, last summer, her aunt’s grandson made a brief snapchat video of what he (and she) thought was a local bigfoot near a forest road. That spurred her to record the next occurrence of the weird sound and to make it public, despite the reluctance of her friends and family. They think it will bring the bad sort of publicity around town - articles about the ‘superstitious indians’ or mangled version of their ancestral stories - but she just thinks it was something that needed to be shared. Not that she’s a monster hunter or anything: she’s just a mom, and will leave the figuring out to others. She is ready to concede that the sound might have a mundane explanation, but she is definitely certain it’s no elk nor any other animal.  
  
My conclusions from this two-day visit is that it could be either-or: there’s nothing to prove it’s supernatural, and nothing to prove it _isn’t_. If our client is willing to fund a more thorough investigation, I can certainly try to find out either way.

* * *

**_Maya:_ **

_Thanks for the update. I've spoken with the client to confirm that you are cleared to go ahead and continue on with further inquiry. Let me know if you need anything else! Stay warm!_

_M._

* * *

**Report 2:**  
  
I returned to Moricetown along with Ivan Azarov, who offered to help with the case.  
Ivan’s tracking skills were able to pick up a faint trail, which we followed until we started to hear a faint wailing, like the one in the video but not so loud and powerful (maybe Wilson enhanced the volume before posting it, to make it more dramatic?).  
  
The trail and the sound brought us to a hollowed-out tree, where a young sasquatch was huddled and in tears.  
Ivan tried to talk to him and calm him down, but either he didn’t trust humans or something got lost in translation, because he started throwing branches at us, slammed me to the ground, and fled. Nothing broken, incidentally, we just got a bit roughed up. I don’t actually believe that he intended to harm us, but he just wanted to get away as fast as possible.  
  
The promise of a snowstorm forced us to retreat to town, and Ivan had to leave for a few hours for Council matters, so I’m using the downtime to write this short report.  
Tomorrow we’ll get back on the trail of the sasquatch. We have a tuft of his fur, so tracking him the second time around should be much easier.

* * *

**Report 3:**  
  
We picked up again the trail the next morning. Ivan used the tuft of fur to cast a tracking spell, and we ventured again into the woods, west of our original location. After a while, to our dismay, we crossed the signs of a snowmobile going in roughly the same direction as our mark, and we risked hurrying our steps.  
  
Half an hour later we started hearing the moaning sounds again, this time more short and urgent. The sasquatch was running away from two human hunters, but he was hobbling: one of his legs was caught in a bear trap, its chain dangling behind him and making a noise that made him easy for the hunters to follow despite the thick woods.  
  
We decided that stopping the hunters was more urgent than catching the sasquatch, so, with the smallest bit of glamour to disguise our features, we jumped on them, roughed them up a little, destroyed their rifles and, well, scared the everliving shit out of them, intimating them to leave these places and never return.  
Since the town wasn’t _that_ far, we thought they could also do without the snowmobile.  
(Yes, we alerted someone in town to go look for them. We were teaching them a lesson, not trying to kill them. Even though.)  
  
With the hunters dealt with, we turned back on the trail of our cryptid. We didn’t actually have to go too far, as the wound was really slowing him down despite his thick skin.  
He let himself be approached this time, too tired to run away, and Ivan broke him free of the trap, while I used the emergency kit from the snowmobile to bandage him up. This seemed to convince him that we were on his side, and he allowed himself to be spoken to.  
  
The sasquatch told us - well, told Ivan, who translated - that his family had been forced to leave their previous home by the advance of humans, and they were roaming the area looking for a new place to relocate. A few months ago he had remained behind to guard their camp while his parents explored one of the nearby mountains, but then he heard a great, roaring rumble, like thunder. A piece of the mountain had crumbled. His parents never came back.  
  
Alone and in unfamiliar territory, he had fended for himself for a while, despite being very sad and lonely. Eventually, while wandering east, he stumbled into Moricetown by accident. The canyon was good for eating salmon, and he thought he had been stealthy enough to go unnoticed by the humans. The two of us and the hunters had proved him wrong.  
  
Ivan and I arranged for a mutual friend, Araci Buto of the Hidden Places, to temporarily relocate the sasquatch to a resort for supernatural creatures where he could heal and get some proper meals, before being reconnected to another sasquatch community in the BC area.

* * *

**_Craft:_ **

_It's good you managed to get the young Sasquatch away from the community and to safety, while you may have scared some hunters away, I'd not be surprised if their story attracted more. We'll definitely monitor the area in case that sort of thing starts happening, just incase there are more families nearby. There's definitely a sect of 'squatchers' who'd love to 'bag' a bigfoot for proof._

_I have a contact that seems to do a decent job protecting a few Sasquatch on Graham Island -- It's isolated and safe from human encroachment. If you want, I can have them put in touch._

_Should we consider this case closed?_

* * *

**Hadden:**

Graham Island sounds good. If you can pass me that contact I'll forward it to Araci; even if our young friend doesn't end up there, I'm sure she'd love to add them to her network of supernatural refuges.

As for the hunters, the story we helped circulate around town is that they hallucinated due to hypothermia. It won't stop the die-hard squatchers, but since we can't suppress the videos, they'd be roaming the area anyways. At least most of them aren't hunters and just want to sneak a peek.

I'll post a proper final report below but yeah, case closed. 

* * *

**Case Title:** Video of Disturbing Sounds from Canadian Woods  
  
 **Consultants:** Hadden Pertwee, with the help of Ivan Azarov  
  
 **Resolution:** The sound was made by a young sasquatch who lost his family. We relocated him to another sasquatch community in BC.  
  
 **Case Write Up:** I explored the surroundings of Moricetown and talked to the locals to get a lay of the land, then talked to Shelley Wilson, the woman who made the video.  
The following day, with the help of Ivan Azarov, we tracked a trail until we found a young, scared sasquatch who escaped.  
The following day we picked up the cryptid’s trail again and saved him from a couple of hunters, whom we scared off. The sasquatch talked to us, and explained that he had lost his family and had been fending for himself for months, but he was scared, and lonely, and afraid of humans. He only risked staying around Moricetown because it was easy to get food.  
With the help of a mutual acquaintance, Araci Buto, we were able to bring the sasquatch to a place of healing, and she is making contact with other sasquatch communities in the region to find him a new permanent home.  
  
 **Follow Up Actions:** We will check with Araci in a few weeks to see how the sasquatch is doing in his new community.


	13. Woman Possessed By Kali

_A Dublin woman claims to have been possessed by the Hindu goddess Kali during a near death experience. This is most likely going to be a debunking gig, but please be careful in case there is more to it than just a wannabe witch trying to generate some publicity for herself._

* * *

**Case Title:** Woman Possessed By Kali  
  
 **Consultants:** Hadden Pertwee  
  
 **Resolution:** It was not Kali, but it was definitely something.  
  
 **Case Write Up:**  
  
I was able to interview Ms Farrar by posing as a journalist, looking to write an article on wicca and neopaganism. I had to listen through a lot of - well, to be frank, a lot of nonsense. We see a lot of weird shit going down in the secret world, but the stuff this woman believes in, it would make laundromat guy in NYC call _*her*_ a conspiracy nut.  
Granted, she does have a lot of in-depth knowledge that she accumulated during her long career, but she lacks the ‘spark’ that would let her connect all the dots, and turn all that load of disconnected information into actual magic. Probably for the best.  
  
Given her recent near-death experience and her supposed communion with the goddess Kali, however, a story stuck out among the others. Farrar kept saying that she and her husband have been repeatedly stalked, during the years, by an unnamed anglo-saxon goddess, until Farrar eventually caved in and agreed to let the goddess work through her.  
When I asked how she wasn’t sure that the entity that touched her during her heart attack wasn’t this goddess rather than Kali, a deity of a pantheon that isn’t remotely hers, she stared at me as if I had just asked why kittens don’t have two heads and six legs. She _*knew*_ it was Kali, and she didn’t see what her being white and British had anything to do with it. Cultural appropriation, ho!  
  
It was undeniable, though, that there was something weird going on around her person, quite palpable even to someone like me who has the supernatural radar of a baked potato. The air in the house was dense and full, and more than once I had the feeling that there was something breathing down my neck, or I kept getting shivers despite that the room was hot and stuffy.  
  
When I left her house, I checked the readings on the anima meter I was carrying in my jacket, and there was definitely a higher-than-average thaumaturgical level in there, dotted with several spikes.  
  
The interesting thing? I returned there the following day, when she and her husband were out of the house, and all the readings were normal. A little higher than baseline due to residual activity, but not as high as the other day, and no spikes.  
But as soon as Ms Farrar’s taxi stopped in front of her house, the levels of thaumaturgical activity started rising again. Whatever it was, she was carrying it with her.  
  
I camouflaged myself again and attended one of her public appearances in London, keeping to the back and covered by my distraction amulets. In the middle of a communion ritual, she suddenly got a faraway look and started babbling out words and numbers which, Farrar said later, had been whispered to her from the goddess Bast, and they were about the construction of pyramids in ancient Egypt.  
As predicted, the anima meter spiked with activity while she was talking, which seemed to confirm the supernatural origin of the words - but a bit of googling proved that those words and numbers were actually about a woman buried in Highgate cemetery, killed by a spurred lover in the mid 1860s.  
  
A second supernatural occurrence proved similar. Farrar said she felt the presence of Boudicca during an invocation, but it was really just a bwca who was tidying around the house of her host. The bwca was thoroughly amused.  
  
So, to sum up, Ms Farrar does have a contact with ‘the beyond’, but she does not seem to know the true nature of it, and like her knowledge of the supernatural, she’s not using this power at its best, nor the information she gains from it.  
My guess would be that she is very much like Madame Roget before the fog: a minor medium or seer that never had a chance or reason to hone her skills, but is still visited upon by the supernatural.  
  
 **Follow-up actions:** We should set someone to keep an eye on her, or at least keep track of her public appearances. Even an out-of-tune radio will occasionally pick up something important.

* * *

_There definitely seems to be an uptick in people who are connected to the secret world, as of late. Or maybe there's just more of us investigating to know this._

_She might end up being a source of information, but it seems like that information is going to have to be translated before it's of any use to us._


	14. Winds From Nowhere

_Cliff Mass, a Seattle meteorologist and professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington has requested assistance in determining the cause of destructive winds that came out of nowhere. Over 100 old growth trees were completely felled by the strong winds. Some of the trees simply fell and others were snapped at the base of the trunks. Since no scientific explanation has been immediately forthcoming, we've been asked to look into any possible supernatural explanations._

* * *

**Case Title:** Winds From Nowhere  
  
 **Consultants:** Hadden Pertwee  
  
 **Resolution:** The winds were caused by some teens’ misguided attempt to bind a cyclone woman  
  
 **Case Write Up:**  
  
I spent the first few days investigating the area, but time and the destruction caused by the wind didn’t leave much traces to examine. Some trees showed signs of something that could have been magic runes or wards for a ritual, but they might have just been scratches made from animals, or damage from the fall.  
  
That done, I spent some time in the villages around the lake, chatting with the locals and overhearing gossip, trying to find if something else of note had been happening at the same time.  
Surprise surprise, two boys had turned up with injuries at the local hospital the morning after the wind event: one with a sprained ankle, the other with a broken wrist. To the doctors and their parents, they said it happened while they were out climbing in the woods south of the lake, so very far away from the patch of fallen trees. Three other friends were with them and confirmed that version of the story.  
  
And so it was that Hadden the Social Services guy went to meet with those boys and their parents to look for possible signs of parental negligence, just a formality, you understand, but I need to talk with the boys and take a look at their rooms.  
Surprise surprise again, one of the boys, Erik Williams, had hidden behind his bed a thick notebook marked “private” (as if that ever worked) containing detailed recounts of Quinault and Coast Salish stories, several pages of drawings of half-naked mythological women, and what looked like several half-assed attempts at writing down a summoning ritual.  
  
I confronted the boy alone with the evidence, and he was reluctant to talk at first, but after showing him that I knew about magic he finally caved and spilled the beans.  
Erik said that he had started collecting stories from his grandparents when he was a kid, and as he grew up, he and his friends had started tossing around the idea of actually trying to summon one of the spirits from the stories.  
He chose a cyclone woman because he thought that a humanoid spirit would be more easy to talk to, or learn magic from, or - you know, that kind of teen, hormonal, messed-up reasoning that makes one look at the plot of Weird Science and think that’s a good idea for a Saturday night.  
  
So Erik started talking to the elders of the village, asking little things here and there about their rituals, taking his time and splitting his questions between different people, trying to look just like a boy curious about his heritage, and not someone trying to piece together a real, working summoning spell.  
Eventually he thought he had collected enough data to try and piece together an actual ritual, so he called his friends, collected everything they needed, and they all went into the forest to cast their spell.  
  
Contrary to all expectations, the summoning actually worked. And contrary to the boys’ expectations, the cyclone woman was less Kelly LeBrock and more twenty-feet tall force of nature with gales for hair.  
The spirit was clearly annoyed at having been summoned but, luckily, cyclone women are not naturally malevolent; so she ‘just’ flattened all the trees in the area to show her displeasure, and vanished soon after without causing further damage.  
The boys limped home mostly unscathed, apart from the injuries mentioned above, settled on a plausible cover story, and swore not to tell anyone what happened.  
  
I confiscated the parts of Erik’s notebook that dealt with the rituals (he can keep the half-naked drawings), gave him one of our business cards, and made him swear to call us if he happens to stumble into anything else that looks like it might be real magic. We’re likely to get a few false leads from him in the next months, but hopefully the idea of being a supernatural lookout will keep him from trying to do any more magic work himself.  
  
 **Follow Up Actions:** Whether he comes up with any solid leads or not, let’s keep an eye out for this kid. He figured out a working spell from disconnected bits and pieces, so not only he has some good magical potential in him, but he also has the attitude of the researcher or scholar. Could be a good new recruit or local asset, once he grows out of the acne.

* * *

_**Craft:** _

_A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. A little knowledge and the hormones of a teenager can be devastating._

_Gotta say, that's excellent work on handling the kid, he's obviously opened the door into the secret world a little bit, and I know once it's opened things start coming through the cracks. He'll likely be a good contact to have in the area, and we might be able to offer him some training ... when he gets a little more mature._

_I hope you have Erik YOUR card and not mine though._

* * *

**Hadden:**

Yeah, he has my office number and mail. Don't worry, you won't get suspicious random calls from a stranger teen. 


	15. The Plant Lady

_[Link to a tablid article: "British woman who went missing in Brazilian rainforest reveals she had starved herself for a month to 'learn how to be nourished by the sun, not food'"]_

_This is an interesting case that may take a bit of finesse. We've been contacted by the father of the girl involved. He's fairly well-connected and has done business with the various factions on occasion. He has come to us so that we can discreetly investigate what really happened to the girl. His concern is that because she's had some health challenges in the past that she has become a bee without realizing what's happened. If this is the case, we will need to verify and discern whether or not she has any association with one of the factions so he can know where to begin his negotiations on her behalf._

_If it is not the case, we are left with the question of how a human who claims to have heard a "divine voice" could survive for such a long period of time. She insists that she was able to convert energy from the sun into food for her body. We've seen stranger things, but usually not without a supernatural explanation._

_Our best source so far is the man who discovered her in the Brazilian forest and the folks who run the resort where she was staying. If you need to speak with the father, please let me know beforehand as his need for discretion will require some prior arrangements before making contact._

* * *

**Case Title:** The Plant Lady  
  
 **Consultants:** Hadden Pertwee  
  
 **Resolution:** The girl was led astray in the forest by a Chullachaki  
  
 **Case Write Up:**  
  
The first persons I contacted in Dom Jose were Neli and Luiz da Terra, the couple that was hosting Katherine Brewster when she disappeared. I approached them as a journalist doing a follow-up piece on Ms Brewster, and they told me roughly the same things as in the articles: that she arrived in town without warning, that she was very reserved, and that she was looking to find a deeper communion with nature.  
  
They were actually surprised that she managed to get lost like that in the woods, and at first they thought she had simply left like she arrived, because she had taken her credit card and passport with her. But somehow she had reached an area that was very difficult to access, and couldn’t find her way back.  
  
Despite their assurances that the woods were small and the river was an easy reference point, I contacted Clairton da Silva, the man who found Katherine Brewster, and asked him if he could show me around the area where the girl had been found.  
Da Silva didn’t think it was a very good idea, but after I said I’d be going there alone anyway, he relented and agreed to accompany me in exchange for a donation to the ecovillage he works for.  
  
As expected, the woods were dense but not very large, and the sound of the waterfalls and the river provided easy navigational aids even in case one lost the path. Still, I couldn’t help shaking the feeling that we were being watched.  
I cast a simple spell of distraction and I could feel magic push against it, angry that it couldn’t see us any more. I thanked da Silva for his help and returned to the town.  
  
The following day I returned to the same stretch of forest, leaving a signature clear enough for anyone with magic to detect. I could feel the same presence following me, and soon enough I noticed that my compass had started spinning around unreliably, and even our magically-warded phone was having trouble keeping a signal.  
  
That’s when the plants started chortling.  
  
Despite the surprise, I recovered quickly enough to ask who it was. They said that they were the spirits of the plants and trees. They had heard me talk about the white girl who thought she was so close to nature. “The silly child,” the voices said, seemingly coming from the fronds and leaves, “she wanted to commune with Sachamama, but she didn’t even know what fruits to eat, which leaves not to touch, which branches to use for shelter. She couldn’t follow the sound of a river, nor walk without cutting her feet, nor keep herself dry in a storm. She thought nature’s way was fasting and chanting. Who ever heard of such a thing! We showed her the true life of the forest. We showed her the struggle of life, the pang of hunger. She was beginning to understand, when your people found her. Had she not been taken back, she could have become my child, in time. Tended to my gardens.”  
  
“My?”, I asked, and the creature realized that it had made a mistake. It was no talking plants, no spirits plural, but just one.  
“No matter,” the creature said, “you will do just fine. You smell of Sachamama. You will learn the same lesson, and when you are ready, you will then learn how to tend to the garden.“  
  
I could feel the air shift around me as the spirit cast its spell of confusion. It was more subtle than strong, tied into the roots of the plants, and ferns, and trees. All paths seemed equal. Walking into any direction just looped back to the same spot. It looked like there was no way out.  
  
If the spirit wanted to see me panic and worry, though, it was in for a surprise. I had loads of food in my carryall amulet, and I was fairly sure I could teleport to Agartha anyway. But playing the spirit’s game might have gotten it to show up, so I wandered around the woods, poking at corners with magic, looking for a breach.  
I could tell that the spell was just playing in my head. If Clairton and his friend had managed to find Ms Brewster, that meant there was no actual physical barrier between where we were and the outside.  
Knowing that wasn’t helping me with actually _getting out_ , though.  
  
As if summoned by me thinking of him, Clairton’s voice echoed through the forest, calling my name. I didn’t want him to get caught too, so I shouted back, telling him that I had just gone to see the waterfall and was going to be back in town in time for dinner.  
I will admit I was surprised when he told me I’d been away all night. I thought it had just been an hour, at best.  
  
Still, Clairton was a good tracker, so it didn’t take long for him to find me. I tried to explain the situation on your way back, but he just ranted to me about how tourists shouldn’t go out in the woods alone, and ‘stuff like this’ brought just bad publicity to the place, and how I could have ended up like Kath, and then it just hit me that, both times, _Clairton had been immune to the spell_. And so I just flat out asked him how long he’d been covering for the spirit.  
  
The man was defensive at first, but a quick demonstration of magic got him to talk. He called out a name, and a short, ugly humanoid with one foot much larger than the other stepped out from behind a tree. The creature, Babakyhp, called itself a Chullachaki, a spirit of the forest. He protected the plants and punished the humans who broke the rules: disrespected the forests, hunted outside of the proper days, that sort of thing. And every once in a long time, the Chullachaki tried to get a human to join them, to make them into one of their own and tend to their gardens in the secret parts of the forest.  
  
“I met Babakyhp when I came back from the army,” Clairton continued. “He sensed my love for the growing things, but I told him that I could not follow him into the forest because I was helping build the sustainable village. He understood, and he helped me, and taught me many things. But he’s been looking for a substitute ever since. There are not many Chullachaki left, and those who are, are often separated because of the deforestation. They’re a dying breed, at least in this area.”  
  
Babakyhp seemed uncomfortable with discussing more of his species, and apologised (although only after Clairton reminded him to) for trying to get both Kath and me to become tenders for the forest.  
I said it was OK, as long as he didn’t trap people any more; and that I understood his need, but kidnapping humans was only going to bring more unwanted attention to his area - the very same point that Clairton had argued with me earlier. Babakyhp would just have to be more subtle and find an actual volunteer, rather than kidnapping someone.  
  
Me and Clairton returned home without further problems, and we spun a story about how I had not got lost at all, but had just spent the night in a nearby town and forgot to call in. However, before I departed to come home, Clairton told me that the Chullachaki were not human and didn’t really understand many of our ways, so he would continue keeping an eye on Babakyhp and make sure he didn’t kidnap anyone else.  
  
 **Follow Up Actions:** I’m calling this case closed, but I will try to keep in touch with Clairton Da Silva and ask him how our mutual friend is doing. As long as Babakyhp can be managed and mollified by words, he’s not a real threat; in case things change, we’ll have to step in.


	16. Nine Ghosts Renting

_Well, this is an odd one. A prospective buyer for "the most famous Haunted House in Mineral Wells" has asked us to verify the presence of all the nine ghosts that allegedly live in the house. The selling price is much higher than the actual market value for the estate because of the extra revenue the owner makes from the regular ghost tours and  
bookings, and the buyer wants to make sure that "the moneymakers" are there before making the investment.  
  
The catch is that, if we found the ghosts, we are _not _to exorcise them or remove them from the house. The ghosts do not usually seem dangerous, apart from a few scratches and bites to rude visitors, so this requests should not be a problem - but you're allowed to take initiative in case the ghosts turn out to be violent or dangerous to the general population._

* * *

**Case Title:** Nine Ghosts Renting  
  
 **Consultants:** Hadden Pertwee  
  
 **Resolution:** There are, indeed, nine ghosts in the house  
  
 **Case Write Up:** Our ghost-hunting equipment was easily able to grasp some silhouettes of the ghostly inhabitants. While it was clear that there were _some_ ghosts in the house, however, the photos by themselves were too blurry to prove how many distinct entities resided there. When they turned up on camera, they looked more like Pac-Man ghosts or misshapen blobs rather than people.  
  
I tried setting up some small trap-wards, to see if I could get the ghosts individually and, if not take better pictures, get a sense of their ‘personality’. The ghosts, however, didn’t seem interested in interacting with me, and they barely reacted to the house as well. There wasn’t much of the usual EM interference, or cold spots.  
Instead, they seemed to congregate around specific areas of the house.  
  
I dug a bit for information, trying to understand what is (or was) about those spots that seem to attract them. It seems that in the 1930s the house hosted a Chinese laundry service that catered, among others, to the nearby famous Baker Hotel; four of the ‘ghost spots’ correspond to early automated washing machines or wringing machines.  
  
Then, in the 1940s, the anti-asian sentiment drove the owners of the washing business away, and they sold the house and its machines to a different kind of profitable business that also caters to hotels and washes a lot of linen. Yep. With several hundreds of military men stationed in Mineral Waters, the house turned into a brothel. A very vibrant business, at least based on historical accounts.  
  
After the War, morality kicked in again and the house went back to being a cleaner’s, and with the hotel back in decline for all of the following decade, that went out of business too, the house was completely renovated, and voila, a new family house was born.  
  
Now, you ask, did anyone die by using those early washing machines? Did someone get gruesomely killed by a wringer? Electrocuted by faulty wiring? A prostitute killed by a jealous man, or a john offed for being too violent with a girl? Little girl falling down the stairs while playing? Family man doing a murder-suicide? Nope. Nothing of that. It was all nice and above reproach. Well, as much as a brothel can be.  
  
So, who _were_ our sheet-shaped ghosts?  
And then it hit me.  
  
Ladies and gentlemen of Knightstbridge, I present to you the ghosts of _nine actual linen sheets_.  
  
Don’t ask me how it works. Don’t ask me how it’s possible. But it’s the theory that checks. The sheet-shapes shapes move from washing machine to wringer and then to a bed, and then again to a different washing machine, wringer, and bed. Over and over, again and again.  
  
Maybe the fabric absorbed the impressions of some supernatural creatures that slept on them. Maybe there was something special about that cut of cloth, or the detergent, or the water they were washed in. Maybe someone _*did*_ die on them at the hotel. I guess we’ll never know. But once again I have learned that this world is even more weird that I ever imagined, and it was already pretty frakkin’ weird.  
  
I notified the buyer that the house is actually haunted with the required number of ghosts. I may have not mentioned their nature, as I doubt he would have believed me. He was satisfied with my assessment, so, case closed.  
  
 **Follow Up Action:** None required. Unless you want to do some supernatural laundry.


End file.
